What is it with folksy good ole boy managers and Pedro Martinez in Yankee Stadium?

I don't think there is a Phillies fan alive who wouldn't have taken 6 innings 2 runs by Pedro Martinez in his Game 2 outing. Especially with a completely rested bullpen to throw innings 7, 8 and 9.

So when Pedro came out to start the 7th, I was surprised.

This isn't a second guess. I sat on my couch in South Pasadena and said "I can't believe he's staying in... take him out if he let's up a batter."

Do you know when I said that exact same sentence regarding Pedro Martinez in Yankee Stadium?

Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS.

I remember when he came out to throw the 8th after an entire season of going 7 innings tops, I thought "Odd... they haven't hit Williamson, Timlin nor Embree all series... take him out the second he lets up a hit."

With 1 out Jeter doubled and I said "Take him out now!"

And we all know what happened.

Well tonight I said the same thing... and when Jerry Hairston Jr singled I said out loud "OK, go to the pen."

And another gray haired good ole boy manager let him in a hitter too long.

The Yankees eventually scored that insurance run that gave the Yankees breathing room they would need.

Imagine the 2 runners on base in the 8th for the Phillies with only a 1 run deficit.

Imagine Ryan Howard coming to the plate representing the tying run... or Matt Stairs coming up with Ibanez at second as the tying run.

Well it is too late now...

The Phillies got the split in New York but on Halloween, the pressure falls back on the Phillies shoulders. They can't fall behind 2-1 and face Sabathia.

I was going to declare this is the beginning of a great series... but 2006 began with a split. The Cardinals won game 1, the Tigers won game 2 and it looked like it might be a long series.

Nope done in 5.

Last year the Rays and the Phillies split and it looked like the series was going to go on for a while. It did, but that was because of the rain delays and suspended games!

But if the Yankees and Phillies exchange wins in Games 3 and 4... this might turn into a classic.

Just let's hope Charlie Manuel squashes the Grady Little within.

Somewhere Grady Little is laiughing his ass off

People are now screaming that Charlie Manuel took Pedro out TOO SOON!

Keep in mind this was 6 seasons after the 7th Game in 2003 when all logic pointed to him being lifted in the 8th.

And he's had, what, 3 potential career ending injuries since then.

Yeah I know he was under 90 pitches. He also gave the Phillies 7 shutout innings when everyone on the planet was wondering if he could go more than 5.

To author and friend of Sully Baseball Michael X Ferraro's credit, he said on the phone to me during the 8th that Pedro should stay in since he only threw 87 pitches.

Have Utley turn a double play and this conversation is moot.

I'm sorry dad... but GO DODGERS!

My dad is as big and passionate Giants fan as you will ever meet.
How passionate is he? When we were reading the sports section this weekend, he was breaking down why he still thinks the Giants have a shot.

THIS YEAR!!!

It is late August, the Giants are 19 games back in the loss column, and my dad is not prepared to wave the white flag.

Well it pains me to tell me dad… and my many other Giant fan friends… that the entire staff of Sully Baseball has unanimously decided to root for the Dodgers in the NL West.

And I would argue that all Red Sox fans should do the same.
Let me count the ways

1. Nomar deserves our love.

Yeah it ended badly, but he played his butt off when he was with the Red Sox and carried the offense alone some years. He was the Fred Lynn of the 1990s and 2000s… a Hall of Fame caliber player derailed by injuries who saw only flashes of brilliance when sent off to his native Southern California.

It would be nice to see Nomar back in the playoffs.



2. Manny deserves our love.


Yeah it ended REALLY badly and maybe there isn’t enough distance from the nasty split. But come on! He was a great player for 7 and a ½ seasons in Boston and lest we forget he was the 2004 World Series MVP! That should buy a lot of love.

Plus it would be worth seeing him in the playoffs if for no other reason than to see if he tries to take a leak in the bullpen during pitchers warm ups.

3. Derek Lowe deserves our love

Yeah it ended badly… no wait it didn’t! It ended wonderfully!
It ended with Lowe winning the clinching game of the Division Series, ALCS and World Series in 2004.

He should be worshipped (and the fact that he blew tons of games as a reliever and pitched himself out of the regular season rotation in 2004 should be long forgotten)

4. The Grady factor

There are still people who think Grady Little got a raw deal in Boston. Last year’s Dodger club house which resembled Lord of the Flies should have put that to rest. But seeing them go to the post season AFTER Grady left should finally put that
nonsense to bed.

Speaking of the manager…



5. Yankee schadenfreude

Come on Yankee haters!

What would be more glorious than seeing the Yankees miss the playoffs all together? How about Joe Torre leading the Dodgers TO the playoffs! Get the Yankee second guessing machine going. Get Hank Steinbrenner to think they made a huge mistake.

And know Joe would be laughing his classy ass off.

Instability in Yankee land gave us the 1980s and early 1990s when the Yankees spent every October playing golf from 1982 to 1993.

6. You can’t POSSIBLY want to see Arizona

For Christsake, even the people of Arizona don’t want to see Arizona in the playoffs!










7. More Awkward Celebrity Sightings

Besides John McCain, who the hell are you going to see at a Diamondbacks game? And I think he is going to be a smidge busy this October. Plus with all of his houses, who knows where he is actually staying these days.

Fox can send their entire fall line up to sit in Dodger Stadium. Awkward to be sure… but what if you saw the dude from Hell’s Kitchen hit by a foul ball? Come on that would be good TV!





8. It’s more convienent for me!

I just got a place which is a 10 minute drive to Dodger Stadium.
I want to be able to see some playoff games live!

(OK, I confess, that one was more for me.)

Just give Joe Torre Manager of the Year now!

Seriously...
He has it all wrapped up.
All he has to do is be a better manager than Grady Little.
I'm not talking the X's and O's of managing. That has never been Torre's strong suit (Torre's managerial mistakes may have cost the Yankees the 2004 pennant and probably World Championship.)

Then again a chimp with a magic 8 ball is probably a better X's and O's manager than Grady.

Joe's great talent was getting different personalities together and focusing them on the task of winning.

He won divisions with such Hall of Fame douchebag personalities as Jim Leyritz, Paul O'Neill, Cecil Fielder, Mike Mussina, Roger Clemens, David Wells, Kevin Brown, Randy Johnson, Chad Curtis and the grand daddy of them all... Gary Sheffield.

Everyone seemed to respect Mr. Torre... even grudgingly the Steinbrenners.

The Dodger clubhouse was so disjointed last year that I was expecting to hear they killed Piggy while he was holding the conch.

That's not happening with Torre. And no doubt it will be a more peaceful clubhouse and they'll do a little better than 82-80.

And in the National League a little better than 82-80 will probably mean homefield advantage in the Division Series.

Torre will be hailed as the man who turned the Dodgers around and he'll win Manager of the Year.

I've said it before, Grady Little seems like a good baseball guy and an ideal manager for a farm team or a perennial loser (did someone mention the Pirates?)

But if I owned a marquee big market club, I'd rather have John McGraw manage it.
And he's been dead since 1934

In honor of Grady Little...

Yeah you read that right!

I am honoring the man I spent two postings trashing and did a Cold Pizza segment calling for him to be fired.

Why am I honoring him?

Two reasons:

1) If he wasn't so staggeringly moronic managing in the 2003 playoffs... if that was just a normal playoff loss instead of a hair pulling choke job instigated by his inability to manage in the big spot... Theo might not have made the "push all the chips to the center of the table" moves before and during the 2004 season.

Maybe if the Yankees had won in 6, Grady would have stayed as manager, Schilling would have been a Yankee, Foulke would have gone to a place like the Dodgers and Garciaparra would be limping through a new contract and there'd be no 2004 title.

Instead Grady butchered the playoffs in a way that made the most logical people in the world say things like "maybe there is a curse!"

Theo said "F--- This! We have to win NOW!"


2) He seems like a nice guy. Not a good manager, but a nice guy.

So for you Grady...

THE MAGIC NUMBER IS 3!

Explain to me how Grady Little still has his job!

First of all, for everyone who said the Red Sox fired Grady Little because of one bad move, I hope you are enjoying that nice bowl of crow.

The man's inability to manage a pennant contender has become so obvious that he has the Dodger fans fired up.

Think about that sentence... a fan base that shows up at the 3rd inning... a fan base where you see cars leaving the parking lot while Kirk Gibson hit his homer... is now passionate enough to hate Grady and have a petition to fire him!

Sports Illustrated's Jon Weisman does a great job breaking down his incompetency, but if you have a team loaded with solid veterans and exciting young hitters... if you have a Cy Young candidate in the rotation and in the bullpen... if you are playing in the wide open National League... and are irrelevant the last week of the season... then you HAVE to fire the manager.

Not in the off season. NOW!

Get someone on the coaching staff to fill out the line up card.
How could you do a worse job than Grady at that?
Maybe the team would be motivated?
How could they be less motivated than they are now?

But let everyone admit... the Red Sox were no dummies letting this dummy go!

Grady Little botched up a game? NO WAY!

Let's play manager, shall we?

Your team, for the sake of argument let's call them the Los Angeles Dodgers, is playing a division rival, like say the San Diego Padres.

And let's also say the Padres are throwing the guy who will probably win the Cy Young Award while you are throwing a guy that the A's threw in the garbage bin.

And to spice it up a bit, let's pretend your team desperately needs this win! A win means you are only 2 back in the loss column of a playoff spot in mid September, but a loss drops you 4 games back with only 2 1/2 weeks to play.

So in our pretend game, the Padres bomb your reject pitcher for 4 runs in the first two innings... it's so bad you have a pitcher warming up in the 2nd.

So you get to the bottom of the second... the best pitcher in the National League staked to a 4 run lead... but you load the bases with 2 outs and have the washed up slapped around pitcher coming up.

What do you do?
Do you pinch hit for him?
Do you give your team a chance to score a run or two off the Cy Young favorite?

Before you make your decision, know that the front office have called up 11 extra players. You have 16 pitchers over all... 11 of them relievers you can use. And you have 10 pinch hitters on the bench.

What do you do?

If your answer was "Pinch hit for the pitcher"... then you are obviously right.
If your answer was "Let the pitcher I am going to take out anyway hit for himself" then you must look in the mirror and see Grady Little looking back at you.

Who else would manage an urgent situation with less urgency?
Season possibly on the line, an excess of bats on the bench and arms in the pen, and you sit back and do nothing at crunch time.

Well guess what happened? Loaiza, the pitcher, struck out and then let up back to back homers sinking the game and probably their season.

Dodgers fans... now you know how we Red Sox fans felt!
People who were in support of Grady after Theo fired him said "they fired him based on one bad move... leaving Pedro in game 7."

Well first of all, it was a pretty big situation... all it did was cost the Sox a trip to the World Series.

But it was more than that. He has managed like that all year. I had red marks on my forehead from all the times I slapped it during Grady's two years.

I'm not saying Terry Francona is John McGraw... but at least I know what he is doing! He's taking orders from Theo.

I was on Cold Pizza after Grady was let go and I said "He was born to be the manager of the Pawtucket Red Sox."

I stand by that.
Grady seems like a good guy and a good baseball guy.

If you want a good minor league manager, I'd hire him.
If you want someone to manage the Pirates, Reds or Marlins... you could do worse.
If you need a bench coach, I bet he'd do the job.

But if you have a high profile big market franchise that you are looking to take to the playoffs... trust me, this is not who you want.

For my dad and any other Giants fans who read this blog... you should light a candle at church that Little manages Los Angeles as long as Lasorda did.

You will never have to worry about a Dodger pennant!

This was my Dodger post